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Amazing how times change. Growing up we never went anywhere without a knife. Usually a sheath knife or a multi-purpose penknife complete with a thing for taking stones out of horses hooves. Try as I might I never found an opportunity to use it. Weren’t Boy Scouts required to have a sheath knife as part of their equipment or am I mis-remembering that?
It's only single knives that Asda are removing from sale. I think if you were buying a knife for whatever reason it would look more suspicious buying one rather than a kitchen set so I am not sure how effective it will be but we live in hope.

It depends on the person not the sheath-knife. As a Boy Scout most of us carried a sheath-knife and that is where it was kept, in its sheath most of the time. We never heard of a stabbing in Coventry.
But at eighteen was taught to kill with one, and how to take one off a person. Then again middle thirties in the London underworld it was all knives and not guns. People became famous names etc. but we have become a soft nation, the fine for carrying one without due authority is too light.
I hate this wolf-pack thing of today's youth, rather than the fisticuffs of my day.

I was a Boy Scout in the 1960's and used to spend many weekends at Rough Close. I caught the bus from Foleshill to town, then another to The Bell at Tile Hill, then walked to Rough Close. I was always in uniform and carried two sheath knives and a hand axe on my belt and sometimes also carried a felling axe. Can't imagine anyone getting 100 yards with those nowadays.

When I was a kid, each of my friends always had a knife and box of matches. My knife was a modified carving knife: I'd ground the blade down so it was about 5" long, had a sharp point, and I kept it razor sharp. It was perfectly balanced and was a brilliant throwing knife - into trees or fences, not at human beings. It was a useful tool. None of us smoked, but liked to start fires and burn rubbish - not set light to people's houses. I also had a similarly sized professional lock knife. I bought it from Exchange and Mart in New Buildings. I saw a card full of them in the window, and thought they were flick knives. So I went in and asked the bloke in the shop for a flick knife. He responded with "A flick knife? Phwooarr, you'd get locked up for 20 years if you had a flick knife. Those are lock knives". All perfectly legal... then. I understand they are illegal today.
What annoys me is the mamsy-pamsy attitude of politicians (all 600 plus of them, "House of Fools" as today's Daily Mail [I think it was the Mail] so aptly puts it) and judges. "Knives should only have a blunt rounded end to the blade." A lot of use such a French cook's knife (my favourite) would be in the kitchen. Same with battery acid: "Restricting the sale of acid to the public would stop acid attacks". Like heck it would. If I was determined to get some sulphuric acid, tipping some out of your bog standard car battery would not be difficult. And I'm sure anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry could manufacture it at home. What next? A total ban on all wheeled vehicles... then nobody would ever be killed in a road traffic accident.
It's typical of people in authority to treat the symptom, not the cause. It's not the knife's fault when somebody is stabbed, or the acid's fault when it's thrown into someone's face. It's the fault of a human being. The reality is that our prisons are overcrowded, and the punishment no longer fits the crime. And having a virtually non-existent police force doesn't help. Edited by member, 13th Mar 2019 8:33 am